European directives and the role of the land and business registries against money landering and terrorism financing
M.Carmen Miquel Lasso de la Vega
The fight against money laundering and tax evasion is focusing the interest of the institutions of the European Union, with the poposal to amend Directive (EU) 2015/849, the 5th anti-money laundering Directive, which constitues the main legal instrument in the prevention of the use of the Union's financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing. That Directive, which is to be trasposed, set out efficient and comprehensive legal framework to address the collection of money or property for terrorist purposes by requiring Member States to identify, understand and mitigate risks related to money laundering and terrorist financing. It pursues the maximun possible transparency in financial transactions, which includes all kinds of trust that intervene in different businesses as well as the holders of all types of assets, including Real Estate. That is why Registrars are considerated obliged entities by national regulations with duties of information, comunication and due diligence measures and it is needed the creation of mechanism to record and provide information on these real owners, as the actual beneficiaries, both with regard to legal persons or legal agreements. This is the reason why the Land Registry of Spain has created a special office Anti money laundering Land Registry Office(C.R.A.B), to control this matter. C.R.A.B play a important role in identifying suspicious transactions and it is the comunication chanel between Registars and financial inteligent units. The Land Registry can collaborate as an essential tool to fightt against money laundering. Next step is the interconnection between european Land Registries and european Business Registries Looking at the matter in depth we must consider articles 3, 30 and 31 from the Directive referred.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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